Fairmount Neighborhood Association Historic Home Tour 2020 Newsletter and Booklet

FAIRMOUNT
FAIRMOUNT
April
2020 Winner of Yard of the Month
is the Gaither Family of 1319 S.
Adams. Angela and Patrick Gaither
purchased the house in December 2007, where they were
later joined by son Henry and daughter Alice. The home
was built as a new construction on a vacant lot, using plans
for a 1935 Craftsman bungalow recommended by Historic
Fort Worth. The builder, Alaistair Glen Mace (1945-2013),
also added their matching garage and apt. in 2012. Angela
Gaither says Glen Mace was “fully committed to making the
infill construction historically accurate, inside and out!” She
also reports that Mace once lived in Paris and worked on the
Pompidou Center, a modernist landmark built in 1977 on an
YARD OF THE MONTH
April 2020
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Photograph by Stacy Luecker
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“inside out” plan with the pipes, electrical, and scaffolding
all visible on the outside.
Sadly, the Fairmount photo archives do not currently have a
picture of the original 20th century house at 1319 S Adams.
The 1910 Sanborn fire maps show that 1319 Welch (as S.
Adams was then called) was a vacant lot, with two-story
homes on either side. 1319 was a one-story home by the
late 1930’s, remaining a single-family dwelling as the flanking
structures became boarding houses during the Great
Depression. C B Webster, a Field Employee at the WPA Soil
Conservation Office, owned 1319 S. Adams in the 1940’s.
Webster had previously run a seed store which went under
during the Depression (uscensus.gov). (April 2019’s winner,
Laura Kobetich, also had a house on Hurley previously
owned by a soil conservation officer, Sidney Britt.) During
WWII, C B Webster was in charge of grass maintenance at
Meacham Field where he worked “in cooperation with the
Eighth Service Command of the US Army.” He wrote several
treatises on native and drought-tolerant grasses during
the war to plant in Oklahoma and Texas (US Dept of Soil
Conservation Summaries, vol. 5, 1947). The 1951 Sanborn
Fire maps show a medical clinic on the corner of S. Adams
and Magnolia, in the space currently occupied by Gus’
Fried Chicken. The former Kent and Company “Space” at
1309 was a domicile, and 1315 (a new commercial building
housing Timely MD, a company offering online mental health
counseling to college students) was a 2-story cement block
apartment building with smaller apartments made from renovated
stables out back.
Gaither reports that she “had wanted to live in a yellow
house since she was a little girl,” so she selected Valspar’s
cheeriest butter hue, “Mark Twain Yellow,” for the exterior.
She sewed the black and white striped awning shades
herself, which proved a huge help muting the setting sun
in their West-facing house, and provided a bit of privacy
and sound buffering from a changing urban landscape as
restaurants and bars opened nearby on Magnolia. Like many
homeowners who purchase a new construction, the Gaithers
had no garden at all when they moved in, and not much
budget left to create one after making such a major investment.
First, they planted the boxwood shrubs and Juniper
trees in front. Gradually, they added a line of Texas Red Buds
in the parkway as part of a “Retree Fairmount” initiative.
Currently, the house’s cheerful paint color is matched by
banks of 100 daffodils, secretly planted by a friend before
they moved in Dec. 2007, which appeared as a welcome
surprise the spring of 2008. Angela reports, “they make me
smile every year.” She continued to add few varieties of over
the past 12 years. The daffodils are off-set by the greenish
grey of Dusty Miller, a type of artemisia which will set out
mustardy yellow blooms in the heat of summer. Purple irises
circle a pecan tree on the driveway: they come from Gaither’s
grandmother’s farmhouse “which is no longer standing”;
Gaither also displays ornamental metal iris garden art as a
tribute to her grandmother. Gaither writes, “I always add
pansies and winter rye grass for color during the winter and
early spring. I find this to drastically improve my outlook
during bleak winter days. Everything else is a perennial,
which has to be drought tolerant.” The yard contains a variety
of lilies, Texas sage, salvia, coneflower, lantanas, butterfly
bush, star jasmine, sedum, Chinese fringe flower, clematis
vine, and there is a fall blooming aster variety called ‘Henry”
after their son.
The side and back gardens are reserved for practical purposes:
kids’ playscape, and an area for their large Doberman.
After laying sod three times, and seeing it torn up and
tracked in by kids and pets, they decided to put in a mud-reducing
gravel pit for play, which they will eventually convert
to a succulent bed as the kids outgrow it. Last year, Angela’s
Valentine’s Day present from her family was a raised, tiered
garden bed on the South-facing aspect of the house, which
looks on to a pretty vacant lot punctuated by boxwoods
and trees, which sometimes hosts Christmas and Halloween
displays. The Gaithers grew collard greens in the south bed
through the winter and Angela credits “at least part of my
kids’ love for vegetables to this little garden. We have some
kitchen herbs planted to the side of it, and it’s fun to send
the kids out to get things for cooking, and see what they
come back with.”
Our thanks for their beautiful yard, and a gift card for $30 to
Stir Crazy Baked Goods, go to the Gaithers.
16 USA National Register of Historic Places
www.historicfairmount.com
www.historicfairmount.com
Historic and Cultural Landmark District
17